College of Science meeting notes
AUS facilitated a meeting of University Staff on the PVC’s Plan on 11 May 2007. Notes from the meeting are posted here.Notes College of Science Meeting
Lecture Theatre S 5 on Friday 14 MayWhat is the size of the debt
PBRF $2.6million - $950,000 will come to Science presume this is conservative, we need to check the dataWhat’s the point of attacking the contributing margin?
Contribution margin must be tackled – find central spending. We are told that the University if financially healthy yet we have two Colleges at least which are some financial strife.What is the College income? $52 million, $54 million?
The Centre taxes us heavily. How is the contribution margin arrived at.
Don’t know how it is arrived at, but for a science department the breakdown is roughly: 30% of EFTS, 25%PBRF, 20% External.
Science/Engineering students have similar contributions from the government
Core Business + Central Decision Maker = set margins
Cycle of contribution: college- centre- department-college
Tax on department has been set in three different ways
$1million increase in revenue is projected for Engineering – the message is to make hay whilst the sun shines
Where does the $1million nest egg come from? Senior Management Team?
Where could the nest egg come from?
Strategic developments might be funded from a fund set up at the centre. There used to be a University Research Fund but that has disappeared. The creation of nest eggs is all well and good but what is the guarantee of the funds being carried forwardMerger of Geography and Geological Science, what is the rationale?
What is at stake is our Arts programme in Geograpy– membership of committee and Arts
A feasibility study was undertaken on the incorporation of Gateway Antarctica, but GA is an interdisciplinary area and not reducible to the GeoSciences.
What about the science building?
What is the cost of the merger itself, G + G + GA ?
What are HR terms of reference?
How can we contribute to these terms?
As to the merger of Technical Facilities we have to be mindful of the relationship between technical and academic staff relocating people has the risk of severing this relationship.
The physical locator or co-location of technical staff is not uppermost; the plan is to look at the co-ordination of technical services. Is this ageism? Crude surrogate for costs
How can we draw conclusions without a look at trends both nationally and internationally? In a recent survey in Australia the picture was distorted until the comparison was made using – total staff. We must be careful with figures
We have to be practical here most PhDs will be 30 -33 (assuming they have had some postdoc experience). This looks like a business model that has just be dropped on the university, what are the assumptions behind it? Have they taken into account the long lead time for PhD and postdoctoral study?
There is a question about 3% turnover being low but what does that mean in a university context again what are the assumptions. Surely the focus should be on the quality of research and teaching and not age.
Isn’t there a law against discriminating on the basis so age?Why only one CORE bid?
Report of CORE will be on websiteWhat about a vote of no confidence?
This should only be considered as a last resort.Review of College office?
The meeting agreed that the college office should be reviewed.
Whilst people may think there has been an increase in General Staff employment, this is not reflected in the employment of technical staff. The perception is that technical staff are leaving and not been replaced.
Looking at the picture of General Staff, it is important to tease out where the increase is occurring. There is no increase in technical or library general staff. It is important to analyse the changes by categories.
People are reminded that this is not a plan, but a discussion document
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